This holiday I came down with a rather bad case of the flu. After a visit to the ERgent Care and a follow-up with my doctor, I seem to be getting better. During this time I took leave from television, newspapers or even thinking about the state of our union. Upon my return to reality, it struck me that what we are experiencing with our government and politics in general is what so many other countries have gone through, countries that we read about in school and know about during our lifetimes: countries like China and North Korea in the Far East. Uganda under Idi Amin in Africa, former East Germany in Europe and Chile in the Americas. An overstatement, you might say, but look more closely and the road to authoritarianism becomes clear.<\/p>\n
Even more chilling, perhaps, is the feeling of helplessness and despair. By our tacit acceptance of brutality and corruption as being \u201cnormal\u201d we enable the unthinkable, thinking that it won\u2019t affect me and mine. You can see it and sense it out there on the streets; I see it here in these pages in the comments I receive and those I don\u2019t. Day after day, people are bombarded with news of pardons for convicted criminals, beatings and deportation of innocent citizens, cockamamie attacks on vaccines and education, renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, Department of Defense, and the Kennedy Center, egregious insults of friends and allies (Canada, Mexico, and the EU) all invoked while the president hobnobs with grifters, disreputable oligarchs, wealthy patrons who join him in using the government for personal enrichment. And then there are the attacks on the media, the courts, voting rights, the universities, and the neutering of Congress that I have mentioned before, all of which could easily lead to the breakdown of our constitutional and democratic government. People either don\u2019t or don\u2019t want to think about these things; they just go along to get along. This must be how it felt in Germany in the 1930s.<\/p>\n
About a year ago a friend from Germany said to me, \u201cRobert, it happens very quickly,\u201d an insight offered from her personal experience. To this I would say, yes, it does happen quickly, but only after a timely greasing of the skids.<\/p>\n
It is a frightening recognition where we find ourselves today. And history teaches us that we would not be the first down this road.<\/p>\n
We need to \u201cscrew our courage to the sticking point,\u201d* for 2026. We need to shed our inertia this new year.<\/p>\n
*Shakespeare\u2019s MacBeth<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This holiday I came down with a rather bad case of the flu. After a visit to the ERgent Care and a follow-up with my doctor, I seem to be getting better. During this time I took leave from television, newspapers or even thinking about the state of our union. Upon my return to reality,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-robert-fischer"],"yoast_head":"\n